


Introduction to Women's Studies

by ama



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Canon Characters of Color, Canon Muslim Character, Coming Out, F/F, Friends to Lovers, Rule 63
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-10
Updated: 2020-06-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:15:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24639004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ama/pseuds/ama
Summary: You know the story. They're best friends, they're inseparable, Abra has a rainbow collection of hijabs as extensive and impressive as her graphic t-shirt collection and is the hottest girl Tory's seen outside of a mirror--not that that means anything. Right?
Relationships: Troy Barnes/Abed Nadir
Comments: 25
Kudos: 277





	Introduction to Women's Studies

**Author's Note:**

> You never fully realize how heavily gendered your favorite sitcom is until you try to write a gender-flipped fic. This was a CHALLENGE, y'all, especially Britta, Annie, and Shirley, but the idea of lesbian Trobed kept me going. <3

It’s the first day of school, and Tory is trying to do a favor for the only other brown girl in her Spanish class. She leans across the aisle and goes _pst_ until she gets her attention.

“Hey girl, you left your sleep scarf on,” she whispers. The other girl looks around with a quizzical frown, slowly spinning her pen in her hand, and Tory nods up at her head.

“It’s a hijab,” the girl says says matter-of-factly. “It’s supposed to be on. It’s a way for Muslim women to express modesty around men we’re not related to.”

Tory’s cheeks are burning.

“I knew that,” she scoffs as she sits back in her seat and looks anywhere else. The Spanish teacher takes attendance, and Tory watches out of the corner of her eye until the girl lifts her pen in acknowledgement of a name. Abra Nadir.

—

“Hey.”

Abra catches up with her on the quad. It’s still unseemly warm, and Tory is sweating in her letter jacket. She wonders if Abra is hot in her hijab and her oversize sweatshirt—she has to cuff the sleeves to use her hands—but she seems unphased.

“We have Spanish together,” Abra continues when Tory doesn’t respond. “We talked about my hijab. I’m Abra. My mom’s actually Polish but my dad is Palestinian and he won the coin toss so he got to give me an Arabic name. I have this theory that there’s an alternate timeline where my name is actually Anka—”

“What do you want?”

“My friend Jess is starting a Spanish study group and I thought you might want to join.”

“I’m not stupid,” Tory says defensively.

“I didn’t say you were,” Abra says, but she does it with the perfect blandness that means she’s laughing in the back of her head. Tory knows that look. “So far it’s just me and Jess and Britton, that blond hippie guy who’s always brooding, but he said I should invite more people and I thought of you because we’d already talked so I thought maybe we could be friends.”

“Listen, dude,” Tory says because she is firmly in the ‘dude is a gender-neutral form of address’ camp. “I have _plenty_ of friends, okay? I was prom queen and I went double varsity, so I don’t need to hang out with a bunch of Spanish nerds to make friends.”

Except, she thinks with a pang, that most of her high school friends have left for colleges out of state, or at least far enough away that visiting them is a weekend trip.

“What does that mean?”

“What does what mean?”

“Double varsity, I don’t know what that means.”

“It means I played _two sports_ and was crazy good at both of them. Basketball in the winter and softball in the spring. I was the pitcher, which is the straightest position, by the way.”

“Oh, okay. I don’t really know sports. I’m more of a TV-and-movies kind of gal. I’ve seen all the Air Buds, though.”

“Okay, those movies are _dope_ ,” Tory says, momentarily forgetting that she’s being cool and aloof. “I spent a whole summer trying to teach my dog how to play basketball one year, and I couldn’t even get him to dribble, let alone dunk. I think it might have been because he was a corgi and not a golden retriever. I was hoping his legs might stretch but they never did.”

“That’s too bad. I like movies—I would totally watch a film about an athletic corgi.”

Tory glances at Abra. Her face is still serene and she wonders if maybe the other girl is actually being serious. She hitches her backpack up a little higher on her shoulder. The thing is, Tory doesn’t have a scholarship to Greendale. Sure, it’s cheap as hell and she doesn’t _need_ one to pay for classes—but no sports scholarship means no one to nudge her grade a little higher if it looks like she’s going to fail. And her cousins are already getting enough laughs out of the fact that she’s going to community college instead of regular college.

“So if I join this study group, some smart nerd is going to give me answers to the homework and stuff, right?” she asks.

“I guess,” Abra shrugs.

“Okay, fine, I’m in.”

“Cool. Cool, cool, cool.”

—

The study group turns out to be pretty cool. Pretty weird, and Tory isn’t sure she’d trust some of them to do her Spanish homework even if that was what the group was about—but cool.

The coolest, obviously, is Jess, who used to be a lawyer and still wears blazers and high heels in boring colors, which is what classy chicks do, and generally gives off #bossbitch vibes. After that is probably Britton, who always wears a leather jacket that smells like cigarettes (“I got it from a thrift store because I don’t support the killing of innocent cows for fashion,” he tells people three times within the first week of school, and then one time Senora Chang overhears and tells him that cows kill dozens of people every year and are hardly innocent) and a medley of rubber bracelets on his arms.

There are two other dudes in the group. Tory actually knows one of them—sort of. Andie Edison went to high school with her. They weren’t friends or anything. Tory mostly remembers him as a dork with a lot of frizzy hair and glasses who ran through a plate glass door. Since high school he’s gotten contacts and found better hair products and started wearing tight sweaters and floral button-downs. He’s actually kind of hot, in an uptight nerdy way, but he talks like a Snow White-themed drag queen so Tory’s not going to waste much time barking up that tree. Then there’s Sherman, who dresses like the dad in every black family sitcom that’s ever been written and is at Greendale to earn a business degree because his stereo shop isn’t doing too well and his wife became a stripper behind his back to pay for their home remodel and left him for another dude.

Yeah. There’s a lot going on there.

So Tory’s pretty sure she’s not getting laid out of this group. At first, she isn’t sure if she’ll make many friends, either, even though Jess makes this whole big speech about how they form a community. Jess seems to be every bit aware of how cool she is and vanishes quickly after each session for the first month or so. Britton is the kind of white dude Tory’s mom warned her about, the kind who smiles a lot and calls her “sister” sometimes and claims to love Biggie even though he doesn’t know any of his songs. Andie and Sherman are nice but don’t seem to know how to have fun that doesn’t involve color-coded folders or pictures of their kids, and the seventh person in the group is some rich chick named Pearce who flips between kooky old lady and crazy old lady depending on the day. She’s kind of hilarious, actually, but you never know what you’re going to get. It takes Tory a while to get really comfortable around them.

Then there’s Abra. Abra, as it turns out, is actually pretty awesome. She doesn’t make fun of people—she doesn’t even know how to really mess with people—and she’s good at beatboxing and she laughs at a lot of Tory’s dumb jokes. They don’t have any classes together, besides Spanish, but sometimes after study group they walk together or grab snacks from the vending machines, and a few weeks after classes start, Abra invites Tory to her dorm room to watch a movie with her. Tory says sure, and is then subjected to a quiz so intense that she misses her next class. Abra wants to know all the movies she’s seen and what she thinks of them—because according to her, the first movie they watch together will set the course of their entire friendship to follow. Tory doesn’t know if she believes that, but it’s cool talking about this stuff with Abra because her eyes get all sparkly and her mouth curves up a little even though she says she doesn’t smile very well and— well, Tory’s not sure why she likes it so much, but it makes her feel kind of proud, somehow.

They load up on popcorn, soda, and pizza. Abra has a couch in her dorm room and a crazy amount of pillows and blankets so they get real cozy before the movie starts. (They’ve decided on the first Spider-Man movie, which is the perfect combination of awesome and awful and will set the stage for comic book movie friendship nights to come.) And then, while the opening credits are still rolling, Abra casually reaches up and pulls her headscarf down. Tory catches a brief glimpse of dark hair before a blush rises in her cheeks and she jerks her gaze up at the ceiling.

“What’s wrong?” Abra says. From the corner of her eye, Tory can see her look up, then at Tory’s face. “I don’t see anything. Have you developed x-ray vision?”

“Nope,” Tory says, trying to sound nonchalant. “It’s, um, your, just—” She waves her hand at Abra, then at her own head.

“Oh. It’s okay—you can look.”

“I kind of feel like I’m seeing you naked,” Tory admits with a nervous laugh. “Like if it’s supposed to be private—”

“No, it’s fine. The rules are you’re not supposed to show your hair to anybody you might legally marry but have not already married under Islamic law. So you don’t have to wear a hijab around your husband, father, brother, nephews, in-laws of the above, or any women.”

Tory has a crick in her neck, so she looks down and watches Abra surreptitiously. Her gaze is still fixed on the TV and she munches Milk Duds as she talks. Her hair is pitch black and really soft-looking, falling in loose waves just beneath her shoulders. Abra, Tory realizes, is pretty. Like, really really pretty, with her thick hair and high cheekbones and clear skin and whatnot. Her stomach clenches and then she feels bad, because hey, Tory’s no slouch either, and there’s no need to be jealous. They can just be smoking hot best friends together.

“Any women?” she repeats. “Even lesbians?” Abra’s head twitches in her direction—her expression doesn’t change, but Tory bursts out in high-pitched giggles. “Not that you would—or I would—I don’t know why I said that. I’ve never met a lesbian.”

“I don’t know if I have or not,” Abra shrugs. “I’d still take my hijab off, though, because a lesbian marriage isn’t religiously valid in Islam. Plus then every time I was with a group of women I would have to ask all of them if they were lesbians and I think that’s a social faux pas—mostly because it seems like something Pearce would do. Shh, it’s starting.”

Toby Maguire’s disembodied voice starts to come out of the speakers, and Abra settles back against the couch cushions. Tory slouches and puts her feet up on the coffee table. Her stomach hurts. Pizza helps, though, and so does the simultaneously too cheap-looking and too expensive-looking effects of this groundbreaking early aughts action-adventure film. By the time Uncle Ben dies, she’s relaxed and having a good time.

“Free tomorrow for the next one?” Abra says when it’s over.

“Hell yeah.”

“Cool. Cool, cool, cool.” They get up and take care of the leftovers and trash, and Tory goes to the door. Abra follows her, lingering by the open doorframe—she drapes the scarf around her hair for anyone who might be walking by. “So I guess we’re friends now.”

“Yeah,” Tory says. She smiles. “Friends.”

“We should come up with a special handshake,” Abra says seriously. “That’s something friends do.”

“I’m down,” Tory shrugs. “Any suggestions?”

“Not really. I’ve never had a friend before, at least not one close enough to have a handshake with. The kids in my high school thought I was weird.”

“Oh.” Tory fights the urge to squirm. “Sounds like you went to school with a lot of dumbasses.”

“Nah, I am weird. It’s just in high school people think that’s a bad thing, and in college everybody’s always trying to be unique, so being weird is a good thing. I think. I hope. I’ve got a lot riding on that, actually,” she says, but the corner of her mouth lifts in a little smile, and Tory can’t help the smile that spreads on her face in return.

“Okay. Well, I’ve never had a special handshake, either, so I guess I’ll think on that and get back to you. In the meantime—?”

She holds up her hand, and Abra reciprocates her classic high-five.

“Thanks for inviting me,” Tory says. “I had a really good time.”

“Me, too. Bye.”

Abra waves and closes the door, and Tory stands there for a minute, thinking of absolutely nothing, before she walks away.

—

It’s the usual story. Two people meet, become best friends, become inseparable. They watch movies together, have adventures together, move in together, make a Dreamatorium, share a bedroom, tell each other their hopes and dreams and everything they thought was too stupid or scary or weird to say out loud.

Tory changes—it’s slow, at first, almost unnoticeable, until she wakes up one morning and watches the sun filtering through the patterned sheets of the blanket fort and realizes she’s a completely different person than she was in high school. Little by little, she has lost her shame. She takes dance classes, ballet and modern even though “black girls don’t do that.” She stops wearing her letter jacket and bragging about stuff she did in high school. She no longer cares if people think she’s a nerd for liking cheesy sci-fi or making funny noises in public or being nice to her friends.

Some of this is because of what Jess has dubbed the Greendale Effect—the feeling that, if you’re here, you’ve already hit rock bottom so there’s nothing to worry about anymore. Some of it is Abra. No matter what she does, Abra likes her. Abra thinks she’s cool. And she thinks Abra is....

—

“I know it’s still a few weeks before registration,” Britton says one day in the spring of their junior year. “But _I_ think we should take Introduction to Women’s Studies. I’m serious!” he adds over the predictable chorus of groans. “I’ve been taking Psychology of Gender this year and it _changed my life_.”

“Not noticeably,” Jess mutters. “And anyway, my last requirement is a history class, so I’m not committing to anything unless I know it fits that schedule.”

Tory nods—her schedule is going to be pretty tight with required courses next semester because it took her so long to pick a major—and Pearce says something gross about only wanting to study men and only particular parts of them, and the general consensus seems to be that everyone has at least one good excuse to get out of this class.

“Fine.” Britton turns to Abra. “Still, Abra, you should totally take Intro to Women’s Studies.”

“Maybe,” Abra shrugs. “Feminist Representation in Media was fun, and kind of depressing, but mostly fun. Why me, though?”

“It would be an amazing growth opportunity for you!”

Abra tilted her head.

“You mean because I’m Muslim?”

Eyebrows go up and faces turn away all around the table. Andie looks at the ceiling, Sherman at his folded hands, Pearce at the blackboard, Jess at the middle of the table, and Tory, incredulously, at Britton.

“Of course not! You all know how much I value the rich multiculturalism of the group. I’m just saying, you’re not even _that_ Muslim, right, so obviously you only wear your hijab because your dad wants you to.”

 _“Dude,”_ Tory warns. Abra presses her lips together and her brow furrows in confusion.

“It makes my dad happy when I cover,” she agrees. “Because he worries that becoming too American means not being Muslim anymore, and he thinks covering is a good compromise. But it’s not like it’s hard—I don’t have to buy new hijabs very often, and I think they look nice.”

“They look super cute,” Andie chimes in quickly.

“Yes,” Sherman says with a nod. “They remind me of Andrea’s church hats. Covering _all_ your hair _all_ the time is a bit extreme, maybe, but I for one think it’s nice to see a young girl proving you can be both modest and stylish.”

“You would,” Britton says, rolling his eyes. He turns to Abra again. “But changing how you dress to please your father is _literally_ giving in to the patriarchy! You shouldn’t change yourself because of what a _man_ wants.”

“He’s not making me, though,” Abra says. Her voice sounds calm, to everyone else, but uncertain to Tory—and her forehead still has that indent. She knows what Abra is thinking, knows that she’s trying to sort this information in her mental catalogue of unwritten social cues and cultural norms, and Tory’s hands tighten on the arms of her chair to try and stop the shaking. “I mean, he’s fine with me studying film and living with roommates and not eating halal, so…”

“Still, it’s a tool of control, and that’s why I think—”

“Britton. Shut up.” And now everyone is staring at Tory. “You don’t even know what you’re talking about. Look at Jess—you have a problem with how she looks? The daytime smoky eye and the 10-tips-for-effortless-waves hair and the no-I’m-not-wearing-makeup makeup?”

“Hey.”

“No offense.”

“I don’t think that’s relevant—” Britton says, turning red.

“Yeah, it is, cuz it takes her a hell of a lot more effort than it takes Abra to put on a hijab in the morning. And you don’t think Jess changes how she looks because of what men think about her? Of course she does. We all do. Just because _you_ like one look better than the other doesn’t mean Abra is doing anything wrong.”

“It’s not a question of liking things! It’s about _empowerment_!”

“Yeah, it’s super empowering to have dudes telling you they want to see more of your body than you want to show. You’re basically being a male Pearce right now.”

Those are fighting words and she knows it—the entire table gasps, except for Pearce, who says, “Wow, shots fired.” The blush on Britton’s cheeks darkens.

“That’s not—I didn’t mean—” He struggles to come up with words for a minute, and all he can manage is a mumbled, “Sorry.” There is a stilted pause, then he begins to gather his books. “I’ve got class.”

“That was a bit harsh,” Jess mutters, breaking the silence left in his wake.

“What, you saying he didn’t deserve it?” Tory asks impatiently, flipping her notebook and textbook closed.

“No, just that was…”

“That was some Old Testament justice,” Sherman says with an approving nod.

“Whatever. I’ll see you guys later.”

Tory shoves her things in her backpack and flings it over her shoulder. She leaves the study room, letting the door clang loudly behind her. She doesn’t look at Abra. 

—

That night, she and Abra and Andie have dinner together, like they do most nights. They don’t talk about what happened—Tory is a little quieter than usual, and Andie a little louder to make up for it, and Abra is exactly the same. It is only when they’re in the bathroom, brushing their teeth, that Tory pauses with the toothpaste in her hand and says “I’m sorry for what Britton said earlier. And I’m sorry if I went overboard with what I said back.”

She can feel more words bubbling up, and she sticks her toothbrush in her mouth to stop them. Abra is in the middle of brushing her teeth; she finishes, spits, and swishes a mouthful of water before responding.

“It’s okay,” she says. “It’s not the first time someone’s been weird about my hijab—it doesn’t bother me that much. It bothered you a _lot._ ”

“Well, yeah,” Tory mumbles around a mouthful of foam. “He was trying to change you. For, like, no reason. You shouldn’t have to change yourself to make people like you, because you’re already the coolest person I know.”

Abra smiles.

“That’s nice.”

She brushes against Tory’s back as she leaves the bathroom, and the tension in her shoulders eases. She finishes brushing her teeth but stands there for a moment looking in the mirror. _You don’t think Jess changes how she looks because of what men think about her? Of course she does. We all do._

Tory tilts her head and considers her own appearance. The truth is, she hasn’t thought about men all that often lately. She can’t remember the last time she put on makeup aside from a bit of concealer for breakouts, or her favorite lipstick. (Abra doesn’t wear makeup at all unless she’s in costume because she claims it isn’t worth the effort—and that must be true because a full face of makeup takes _forever_ and she’s still a total hottie without it.) The only exception—maybe—is her hair.

Tory has kept her hair short and simple since… well, since all the elastics her mom used had those painful little bits of plastic on them. She had told her mom it was too much work to do anything else. The truth is, she gave up on afros and twist-outs in middle school because Bobby Krasner and his friends used to roll up the little paper wrappers from their straws at lunch and throw them to see if they could stick in her hair, and it made her feel like shit for reasons she could never figure out. She never told her mom, because she knew if she did then she would complain and tell the teacher and get him in trouble, and Bobby wasn’t _mean_ , he was just goofy. Tory cut her hair short and they moved on to a new game—throwing paper balls at each other’s faces. Then she had given up on longer protective styles in her freshman year of high school, when she wore box braids to homecoming because it was a special occasion and Derek Chapman asked her to dance which was _awesome_ but then got really weirded out when he learned that some of her hair was not, technically, her hair, which was _not awesome._

And that’s crazy. She let a guy with _frosted tips_ make her feel bad about _her_ hair! Seven years later, his opinion still has an effect on her _._ What the hell is up with that?

“Are you still in there?” Abra calls, and Tory jumps. “Is there a creepy girl ghost trapped in the mirror?”

“No,” she manages to say. “I’m fine, I’ll be right out—wait, have _you_ seen a creepy girl ghost in the mirror!?”

“No, I just think it’s good to be prepared.”

Tory starts to aggressively condition her hair, still internally grumbling about Derek Chapman—and Bobby Krasner, for that matter, because he had _never_ asked her out and had thought she was joking when she asked him out, so the idea that she had ever cared what they might think of her was mind-blowing. And she would look cute as hell with her hair in a pineapple.

She pauses, examining herself in the mirror. Yeah. Yeah, she would look really good with longer hair. It will take patience and time and a lot more shea butter, but she can do it. She runs her hands through her hair to detangle it, scoops up some more shea butter, and grabs her sleep cap and… the elastic snaps in her hands.

“Fuck.”

Maybe she should have found a different bag-like thing to hold all those marbles when she and Abra played dragon quest in the Dreamatorium yesterday—but her sleep cap is shiny and magenta and the _perfect_ bag to hold a bunch of fake emeralds. Oh well. She can go one night without it.

—

“Fuck!”

“What’s wrong?” Abra says instantly.

It’s six days later, almost midnight, and they’ve just finished an intense Mario Kart tournament and are about to go to bed. Tory’s hair is already a bit longer than usual—she was due for a haircut soon—but with the way things are going, it’s not going to get much longer than this. She runs a hand over the back of her head

“I forgot to buy a new sleep cap,” Tory sighs. “The elastic broke on my old one last week and I meant to get a new one but I keep forgetting. It’s not a big deal, it’s just I’ve been trying to grow my hair out and now I’ve got all this breakage…”

Abra cocks her head.

“What kind of material is it supposed to be?” she asks.

“Satin or silk.”

“I definitely have satin hijabs. You can borrow one if you want.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, just until you get a new cap. Give me a minute.”

Abra stands and rushes to their blanket fort bedroom. Tory waits for a few minutes, but when Abra doesn’t come back she decides to just go ahead with the rest of her nighttime routine. She goes to the bathroom, brushes her teeth, washes her face with this scrub that Andie gave her—for a dude, he really knows his skincare—and puts in her leave-in conditioner. She returns to their bedroom to find Abra kneeling on the floor with half a dozen scarves scattered around her.

Tory has learned, in the months they’ve been living together, that Abra has a routine with her clothes so that she can look cute while putting the bare minimum of thought into her daily wardrobe—she claims she’s saving space in her brain for more important things. She has several identical pairs of jeans and a huge collection of graphic t-shirts, which she keeps in stacks in her dresser; every morning she picks the next one off the top of each stack without bothering what it actually is, then goes to the wardrobe, where she has hung all of her cardigans and sweatshirts and flannels, each one already paired with a matching hijab. There is more order to these—heavy sweatshirts on one end of the closet, lighter flannels on the other, cardigans in the middle—and within each category they’re arranged by color. Sometimes she deliberates on which to outerwear-hijab combo goes best with her t-shirt, but more often she just grabs the top one. Tory would have thought the results of this non-method method would clash more often, but it almost never does.

The method, now, is in shambles. There is a pile of crumpled, discarded scarves on the floor of the wardrobe, and Abra is comparing two others. She looks up at Tory’s entrance.

“Got it,” she declares, bouncing to her feet. She holds out a shiny, plum-colored scarf with a yellow fringe. “It doesn’t really match your pajamas,” she says with an apologetic shrug. “But the blue and orange ones I have are the wrong kind of fabric. I have one silk black one and one satin silver one and I thought about those because you don’t wear bright colors very often, but I think you should because you always look good in them, and you _do_ wear purple sometimes, so here.”

As she talks, she wraps the scarf around the back of Tory’s head. She has beautiful hands with long, tapered fingers, and they’re gentle and sure as they tuck in the ends of the scarf. Tory is standing ramrod-straight and staring at her. She’s having trouble breathing—it feels like her heart is bigger than usual, pounding more fiercely, taking up the space where her lungs should be. Abra drops her hands and she thinks about saying “thanks,” but it feels like her throat has closed up. _Why,_ though? It’s not like this is the first time she and Abra have stood this close together. It’s not the first time they’ve touched. It’s not the first time Abra has helped her dress, even, because she gets picky about costumes for her movies sometimes.

 _It’s all of it combined_ , she thinks suddenly, and she’s not the smartest person ever but she’s smart enough to realize that this is true. It’s the first time they have stood six inches apart in their blanket fort late at night after two and a half years of friendship with Abra lending her a scarf and tying it for her and chattering away like she usually does and revealing that she knows Tory well enough to have analyzed her wardrobe and complimenting her and letting her dark, doe-like eyes trail down Tory’s body. They’ve done something like this before, but they’ve never done _this,_ and the reason Tory can’t breathe is because she’s in love.

“There,” Abra says, and her lips stretch in that quick, there-and-gone smile she has sometimes.

 _I’m in love with you,_ Tory thinks, but she knows she can’t say that, so to keep herself from blurting it out she leans forward and kisses her best friend.

 _Bad,_ she thinks, her eyes widening and eyebrows shooting up. _Bad instinct. Not good, not good, not good—_

Abra’s hands come to rest lightly on Tory’s neck. She exhales a whisper of breath and tilts her head—their noses were scrunched together before but now they’re not. Abra’s lips quiver and part, but then she seems to doubt herself and closes them again. _It’s okay,_ Tory thinks. She takes a step forward and kisses back eagerly. She puts one hand on Abra’s shoulder to keep her still, and when a loose lock of hair brushes her skin, she shivers and cups the back of Abra’s skull, running her fingers through those loose curls. They _are_ as soft as they look.

They draw back after a minute—slowly, at the same time, and not too far. Abra’s eyes are still and intense, like they’re trying to bore through Tory’s head. Tory licks her lips.

“I—I’m in love with you.”

Abra’s face doesn’t change. Tory is watching, looking for a change, but she can’t see one. Abra’s hands are still on her neck, and now they’re dropping away, settling instead on Tory’s hips and then slipping around to her back. Abra hugs her. Her chin rests on Tory’s shoulder and Tory hugs her back, clinging to her like a life preserver in the ocean, feeling their lungs expand in time.

—

Kissing Abra is amazing, but walking through the hallway at Greendale holding her hand is its own kind of incredible. Tory is a little bit nervous about what will happen when they get to the study room, but Abra squeezes her hand in a pattern used in the Inspector Spacetime series 32 episode 11 that translates to _I’m here for you and together we will defeat the horde of Thoraxis_ and by the time they actually get through the door, Tory is smiling at her like a dope and walking six inches above the ground with twittering birds and floating hearts in her wake. (Probably. She would have to look away from Abra’s face to check, so she doesn’t know for sure.)

“Gay,” Pearce accuses when they sit down.

“Yeah, we know,” Tory says dreamily.

“Knock it off, Pearce,” Sherman scolds.

“Do you two even know how adorable you are?” Andie coos.

“We do, thank you,” Abra nods.

Britton smiles at them—he’s been quiet this week, but things have mostly been good since he apologized, and Tory is gracious enough to smile back.

“Okay, yes, we get it, Tory and Abra are cuter than sunshine and rainbows and baby kittens,” Jess says impatiently. “More importantly, Pearce somehow managed to release _all_ of the ants from our ant farm when she was watching it last night, and we need to find replacements by the time class starts. I vote we steal some raisins from the cafeteria and hope Professor Kane doesn’t look that closely.”

The conversation turns to biology. (Sort of.) Tory glances at Abra—that was easier than she expected. Abra winks. Tory squeezes her hand. It’s code again. _Thoraxis defeated. I love you._

—

The first few days of their relationship are fairly similar to the time they’ve spent as friends, except when they’re alone they do a lot more kissing. Somewhere around the end of the first week, they discover the art of kissing while sitting in each other’s laps, and from that they quickly move to kissing while lying down and it’s official, dating is way better than friendship. Which is a high bar, because their friendship was already pretty fantastic.

Abra’s neck is really sensitive and Tory leaves as many hickeys as she can because what the hell, no one’s going to see them anyway. One night, Tory is running out of space so she tugs Abra’s collar down—and then has the bright idea that she could get even more access by pulling Abra’s shirt off from the bottom. So she does, and Abra helps her, and her brain short-circuits at the sight of all that smooth, bronze skin, interrupted by a simple black bra. Then she freezes.

“Is this going too fast?” she asks.

“Not for me. Too fast for you?”

Tory shakes her head. Abra reaches behind her back and unhooks her own bra, and Tory loses the power of _thought,_ let alone speech.

They make out for a bit more and then more clothes come off and then Tory gets to hear the truly incredible sounds Abra makes when she comes. She’s pretty proud of herself that—or at least, she is until Abra returns the favor. Abra goes down on her with the kind of tireless, single-minded intensity she usually reserves for sci-fi TV marathons, and three or four orgasms later Tory no longer remembers how to talk, how to think, or what it feels like to have sensation in your knees.

The next morning she wakes up still naked, still tangled in Abra’s arms and legs, which is exactly where she wants to be for the rest of her life. They have to get up, though, and get dressed and go to school—it takes a much longer time than usual because they are having physical difficulty going more than 60 seconds without kissing.

“I think pon farr might be real,” Abra says seriously when it takes them three minutes to open the door to leave.

“Maybe,” Tory concedes, lacing their fingers together. “But that doesn’t explain me, because I am _definitely_ not a Vulcan.”

“True. There’s at least one love potion episode per series, though, and many of them are airborne, so I don’t think we should discount it.”

“If I needed a love potion to make me want to have sex with you, then I must have gotten dosed like… two years ago.”

Their apartment is on the third floor—Abra stops abruptly at the landing of the second, and Tory looks up at her. Her eyes are usually a dark, rich, maple syrup kind of color that Tory kind of wanted to fall into, but now they are darker and harder and even more stunning than usual. She quirks an eyebrow. Abra nods once. In unison, they turn and dash back up the stairs.

They do make it to Greendale, albeit a little late. They have a biology test today and everyone’s schedule is packed, so they’re meeting early in the cafeteria to study while enjoying modestly-discounted breakfast sandwiches and juice from Sherman’s Sandwiches. Andie scolds them for being late—he got here _ages_ ago, before Tory and Abra had even managed to get out of bed. They study for about an hour, holding hands under the table the whole time, and then Abra stands and slings her messenger bag over her shoulder.

“I have to go,” she says. “My theater class starts in 10 minutes, and if I’m late, Professor Garrity is going to monologue.”

Everyone else says goodbye without paying much attention. Tory stands to kiss her goodbye. Her lips are cool and taste like mango, and she kisses back languidly and rests her hands on Tory’s waist.

“Okay, bye,” Tory says breathlessly when she pulls away. She can feel herself pouting, and she toys with the edges of Abra’s hijab. She’s wearing one of her favorite outfits today, the cardigan that’s brown on the bottom and blue on the top, and a shiny hijab with orange and yellow stripes. “I’ll see you at lunch, right?”

“Yeah, I’ll text you.”

“Awesome.”

Abra kisses her again, and they might have had a repeat of the can’t-get-through-the-door incident if it weren’t for the fact that they are in public and Jess suddenly blurts out, “What the _hell_?”

“What?” Tory says. “I was just saying goodbye.”

“Yeah, but the rest of us managed to say goodbye while keeping our tongues in our own mouths!”

“I’m with Jessica on this one,” Sherman says gravely. “You never know what kind of perverts could be around to misconstrue innocent gestures of affection. I’ve never seen Star-Burns awake at this time of the morning, but he spends a lot of time in the cafeteria.”

Tory scoffs.

“Why would I stop kissing my girlfriend just because Star-Burns is around?”

“Again,” Jess says. “Myself, Pearce, and many, many other women manage to not French kiss our girlfriends regardless of whether Star-Burns is in the vicinity or not.”

“Plus, the idea that women kissing is an innocent gesture often for the consumption of men is a patriarchal heterosexist tool to—” Britton begins, before he’s drowned out by groans.

Now Tory is _really_ confused. She looks at Abra, who is frowning and looking at the group with her ‘analysis’ face. She tilts her head.

“Tory and I are dating,” she announces. “Our relationship has been romantic for two weeks and sexual for about thirteen hours.”

Tory’s cheeks get hot.

“I don’t think they needed to know the second part,” she mumbles. “And they already knew the—first part…” She trails off into silence as she glances at the group and sees that no, they very much did not know the first part. “Seriously?!”

“ _You_ seriously!” Andie says. “How could you guys not tell us you were dating for _two weeks_? I could have made a banner! But also oh my _God_ you guys!”

He jumps up to hug each of them.

“We told you we were dating the day after we started dating,” Tory says, returning the hug but no less confused.

“Pretty sure we would remember that,” Britton says.

“We came into the study room holding hands and Pearce called us gay and we agreed, and Andie called us cute and we agreed to that, too,” Abra reminds them.

“Pearce calls _everybody_ gay, and it’s _never_ true,” Jess says. “Literally! It’s like a fundamental law of Pearce-ness. Anyone she thinks is gay is straight and anyone she thinks is straight is gay. Case in point, Andie.”

“That is true,” Andie nods.

“Well, not this time,” Tory says. She puts an arm around Abra’s back. “Now, if you excuse me, I am going to walk my girlfriend to class, because I just remembered there is a very spacious closet on the way that we can make out in. See you in Biology.”

“Pew,” Abra adds for emphasis, shooting off a finger gun. They turn to leave, holding hands.

“Wait a minute!” Pearce says behind them. “ _Andie_ is gay? I thought he was Jewish!”

—

For a full fifteen minutes, Tory is convinced she’s going to miss her own graduation because she can’t pull the cap over her hair. Then her girlfriend does something magical with a headband and a safety pin and helps her slip it on. Abra is wearing a gray chiffon hijab, one of the most boring ones she owns, but it perfectly matches her Punchkicker-themed cap—and, consequently, Tory’s Kickpuncher-themed cap. They’re in Study Room F, along with all of their friends and family, and the ceremony begins with Dean Pelton solemnly striding into the room, intoning “Dean, dean dean dean deeeeeean dean.”

It’s not a _real_ graduation, per se—it’s a diploma signing that could have been done through the mail. But Abra has seen all the movies and pulled out all the stops, and just because it’s not “real” doesn’t mean that Tory doesn’t tear up at Jess’s moving alumna commencement speech or whoop and cheer when the Dean reads out Abra’s name.

“Ready for the best part?” Abra mutters as they approach the end.

“Yup.”

“I now pronounce you… graduates of Greendale Community College!”

Tory yanks Abra down into a proper last-scene-of-the-movie arms-around-the-neck foot-popping celebratory kiss as everyone else cheers. Abra looks pleasantly dazed when she finally pulls away.

“Um… I meant the throwing our caps thing.”

“Oh,” Tory says. She clears her throat. “Yeah, me too.”

First, they do their high five. Then they remove their caps and fling them joyfully into the air. It’s the last day of school.


End file.
